Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Getting dirty with Chris Ryan

Episode Date: October 19, 2016

Dr Chris Ryan, Sex At Dawn, Civilized To Death, returns to the DTFH and we talk about swarms, poop, the apocalypse, and argue about what fate awaits the blazing hell train that is modern human civilization.

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Farrell Audio. Hello friends, it's me, Duncan, and you are listening to the Duck Trust Video. Family Hour podcast,

and I've decided to step out on a limb and do what many other podcasters, comedians, Twitter personalities, and news people seem to be afraid to do, which is to talk about the elections. I've been flipping through the various news channels, desperately trying to find some hard data on what's going on in American politics,

and there's nothing there. I went to one of my favorite shows, The Situation Room, with Wolf Blitzer, and Wolf Blitzer spent the entire hour sitting on some kind of rose petal-covered mattress, drinking champagne, and talking about the beautiful sound of horse hooves running on a twilight beach.

He went on to yap about how every single human being that has an ego acts as a sort of window shade, getting in the way of the infinite light of love that radiates from outside of time and space, and then a few kittens climbed into his lap, and he fell into a blissful sleep, a tiny stream of champagne drool running down the side of his face,

and I was disgusted. Guys, we need to get on the phone with our news anchors and tell them that we don't want any more stories about the potential of our species or how love is the most important thing. We wanna see people get blown up. We want to know what the news is gonna be. I wanna hear facts about the stock market,

and most importantly, I want commentary, polls, charts, and all forms of data relating to the upcoming presidential election. That being said, since no one out there seems to have the guts to go out on the limb and talk about this election, I'm gonna do it, and I know I risk being booted off the Feral Audio Podcast Network

and losing all my sponsors, and maybe even being kicked out of my house by my landlord, but I'm still going to do it to quote Shaquille O'Neal, life starts when you step outside of your cone of Zumford, and I'm stepping out of that cone right now. I bought a teleprompter for my podcast studio, and now I will read my endorsement

for the 2016 presidential election off of my brand new teleprompter. Over the last few weeks, many of you have been asking which presidential candidate will receive my very important endorsement. I've spent much time contemplating and have at last made my decision. Both of our candidates,

bag of scorpions and bag of tarantulas have troubled pasts. They're not human and have made mistakes. Many Americans are now confused. They think that both candidates would be horrible presidents, but for me, the choice is clear. I'm voting for bag of tarantulas. Bag of tarantulas is a grocery store-sized brown paper bag

filled with mid to large-sized tarantulas. The bag has been folded over several times and sealed with a wooden clothespin. The sides of the bag are sturdy and dry, and the bag sits upon a wooden table. The sound of rustling appendages can be heard from within. Bag of scorpions is a small paper sack

filled with a variety of scorpions. Many of them have deadly stingers and all have sharp, crab-like pincers. Bag of scorpions has been folded over once and is not clipped shut. The bottom of bag of scorpions appears to be wet. Many supporters of bag of scorpions claim that the bag will not break,

that what appears to be moist spots is actually olive oil that has since dried up. They say that the bag has not only been folded over, but sealed from the inside. But why take risks? We know that bag of tarantulas is sealed with a clothespin, and in this dangerous world, we don't have the luxury of guessing

if bag of scorpions is sealed, dry, or wet. Ultimately, we must be pragmatic and vote for the very dry, mechanically sealed bag of tarantulas. Don't be a fool. When you go to your local polling station, be sure to write in bag of tarantulas as your choice for our next American president.

And don't forget, we need the government. Without them, we would all be doomed. Feels good to get that off my chest, guys, and if you're out there listening and you happen to be a news anchor or a reporter or whatever you do, whoever you are, remember, nothing makes the world happier than hearing talk about politics.

And if you wanna make your mom happy, if you wanna make your dad happy, send him a chart, send him a poll, send him a spreadsheet, or call them and ask them questions about the upcoming elections and write it down in a chart and a spreadsheet that you could then share with all of us on a podcast or through Twitter or on the news.

My loves, we have a true barn burner of an episode for you this week with the legendary man himself, Chris Ryan. We're gonna jump right into that, but first, some quick business. This episode of the Duncan Tressel family in our podcast is brought to you by the techno lords and ladies over at squarespace.com.

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with a Squarespace website, and don't forget to use offer code Duncan, okay? All right. Friends, it is the most satanic time of year. We are approaching Halloween, which means that people out there are putting desiccated corpses and skeletons and spider webs all over their homes

and it scares the shit out of me. I can't stand driving down the road right now. Wherever I look, there's another zombie, ghoul, or ghost. And it's fucking terrifying, which is why I've made the decision to buy a pair of adult diapers from amazon.com. Amazon.com has everything that you might need, including the HTC Vive.

This means that theoretically, if you had some way to connect a high-powered gaming computer, which you could also buy from amazon.com to your car, then you could drive around in a pair of adult diapers with your virtual reality goggles sitting next to you so that whenever you pass one of these horrible skeletons that these freaks have decided to hang in the trees to celebrate a holiday that flies in the face

of Christianity and Jesus Christ himself, you could pull your car over, shit yourself and put on your virtual reality goggles, and then drift away into a digitized world of bliss instead of having to go through what I've been going through, which is a constant series of explosive diarrhea moments mixed in with anxiety attacks that have almost caused me to wreck my car several times.

All of these wonderful things, shit, I bet you could even buy a car at amazon.com. As a member of the Amazon Associates Program, I would like to invite you to buy some of these things by clicking through the Amazon link, which is located in the bottom left-hand corner of our website. When you do this, amazon.com gives us a small percentage

of any of these items that you buy or anything else that you might decide you need for Halloween. It's all located at amazon.com. Just make sure you click through that sweet little portal located in the lower left-hand corner at dunkintrustle.com. Here's some great news. Next Tuesday, October 25th, I'm gonna be doing another virtual reality DTFH

over at Alt Space VR. I have a very, very special celebrity guest. I'm not gonna announce who it is yet, but if you keep your eyes peeled, keep your eyes on my Twitter or on the website, and I will be posting a link to RSVP for that event. We did it a few weeks ago and it was a real blast. I hope that if you have virtual reality goggles

or even if you just wanna watch it from your computer, that you will join us over at altspace.com. Do me a favor, join my forum, won't you? We have a beautiful forum over at dunkintrustle.com, and if you feel so compelled, I hope that you will dive in there and share your stories, questions, or anything at all with us. All you gotta do is go to dunkintrustle.com,

click on the forum link, and sign up. We also have a shop with beautiful t-shirts, posters, and most recently, awesome magical pens. They're all there in the shop section over at dunkintrustle.com, and I hope that you will pick up some of our sacred artifacts and magical items. All right, that's enough of me yapping.

We do have a life-blazing episode of the DTFH today with my fellow PhD, that means doctor, Dr. Chris Ryan, who is the author of Sex at Dawn and the Upcoming, Sure to Be Best Seller, Civilized to Death. He is also the host of a fantastic podcast called Tangentially Speaking. You can find everything you need to find out about Chris Ryan by going to chrisryanphd.com.

All those links and his Twitter links will be in the comments section of this episode at dunkintrustle.com. Okay, everybody, now please get in the lotus position, no matter where you may be. If you're on a subway, if you're riding in your car, assume the lotus position, pull those legs on top of each other,

push your hands down and wrap your hands around your legs three times to create a kind of spaghetti spiral around your legs and spread your legs wide and allow that second chakra to beam a vivid blast of pure white light in the direction of wherever Dr. Chris Ryan's astral body happens to be hanging out. Please welcome to the DTFH, the beautiful Chris Ryan. Come on.

Welcome, welcome on you. Glad you are with us from shaking and going to the blue. Welcome to you. It's the dunkin' vessel. Thank you. Dr. Ryan. Acht. Welcome back to the podcast, man.

I'm back. You're back. It's amazing. You go on adventures. Whenever I hear from you, you're always doing some really crazy thing. I like your prodigal son, dunkin'. Yeah.

That's me. I'm your prodigal uncle. And you're back. I'm back. And I love you. I love you too, daddy. When I talked to you, you were with Wim Hoft the last time we were chatting.

Jumping in ice water or something in some other part of the world. In Holland. Right. Yeah, I met him in Holland a month ago maybe, five weeks ago. And then, well, you know, I asked him to be on the podcast

because I saw he was on Joe's. Has he been on yours? Not yet. And so I got in touch with his son who sort of like runs the Wim Hoft Institute or whatever the professional thing is. And they agreed to do it. And they said, well, let's set up a Skype thing.

And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna be in Barcelona. I'll fly up to Holland. I wanna meet this guy. So any day, you just tell me when he's got a window of time and I'll come to Holland. Cool.

And I have other friends in Amsterdam, so. So I did, I flew up and spent a morning with him and got in the ice with him and then the sauna and then the ice and then the sauna and, you know. Is that the first time you've done that? Yeah. Yeah.

And it was great. And we really got along. And then he said, hey, I'm gonna be in Spain next week. Why don't you know, let's get together. So I was like, yeah, so I got Cassie. We rented a car. We drove up to the Pyrenees where he and some of his friends and family were.

And we hung out there for another four or five days. And then I was telling you before we started, I was just in San Francisco with him this weekend. I set up a podcast with him and Stanley Krippner. Do you feel like you benefited from the ice dips? Yeah. You look great, man. Like when you seem like you've been,

I don't know, you're in shape or something or you've been doing something healthy. Well, thanks. I've lost probably 15 pounds since I saw you last. Being outside of the US I think is the main way I do it. I do the Asian diet plan where you go to Asia and get diarrhea for a month. It works great.

You know, that used to be, they used to sell parasites and pills, didn't they? Well, I interviewed a doctor on my podcast who does worm therapy, helmet therapy. He infects people with worms because they're very, apparently they are very good at alleviating a lot of autoimmune diseases because we evolved, you know, it's this hygiene hypothesis,

which I'm sure you and I have talked about before. We evolved our immune response, evolved in the presence of things attacking us, pathogens coming at us. So we've got all these defenses. But, you know, like the United States military, when there are no enemies, they create enemies. So what happens with the immune system

is when it's not occupied fighting off attackers from outside, it starts attacking itself. And that's, you know, MS and allergies and asthma and all these sorts of autoimmune disorders. Wow. You don't exist in places where people are still dealing with parasites and stuff. So there's a great radio lab about this.

People, they want to Google radio lab, helmet therapy is what it's called. I did read that they're finding out that if children are born through C-sections, they have lower immune systems and that they're actually like rubbing the child with vaginal secretion. Some vaginal secretion on the baby.

Yeah, in fact, in Africa, my wife, Casilda, told me it's very customary to take a little of the mother's, like sort of wipe the mother's asshole. Yeah. And you can smear that on the baby's lips. Really? Yeah. So what you're doing is, you know,

when a baby's born vaginally, if... Do you think that started off not to cut you off? Did that start off, you think it's like a health thing or did that just start off as a joke? Like, or it's just somebody who's like, fuck this baby. Could be, could be. I mean, how do people figure that out? That's pretty strange that at some point in history,

someone's like, you know, you know what this baby needs? You're gonna use your asshole as chapstick. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think people are aware of the benefits of getting down and dirty, you know? And we've got this hang up with sterility and cleanliness. And I think we're the outliers, you know? I think other people are pretty in touch with all that,

literally. I told you about when I was at Esselin and I wanted to get all my students to shit in their hands. I was doing a workshop there. Wow, no. Yeah, I was, I hate doing workshops, man. Like, I'm not. I can tell.

Well, it's just like, I can come in and teach a class, you know, like for an hour and, you know, whatever, give a presentation. I'm fine with that. But like an eight hour, three day workshop, you know, like what do we get? I don't know. Like all that falling into each other's arms and shit.

Trust falls. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. I don't, everyone's standing in a circle. You're better at that kind of hippie-dippy shit. I'm not. Oh, come on. I used to actually, you know what? I would run a ropes course when I was at summer camp.

So I guess I could do some, but with adults, I would have no idea what, I definitely like, I think you just have them shit in their hands and then send them on their way. That's what you do. So I was like, your homework is to shit in your hand. And they were like, what? And I was like, yeah, just do it and you know, whatever.

And so the next day, like, you know, half of them had done it, the other half were like, no, I just couldn't do it. So the whole point was like, why not? What's, what's the issue there? I was like, yeah, I don't want to touch it. Well, you were touching it before it came out of you, right? I mean, what is it that changed between the time

it was in you and now it's out of you that makes it somehow a foreign object, you know? And the thing is the people who had done it and were like, yeah, whatever, no problem. They're people who had been in places like India. Where you just wipe your ass with your hand. You wipe your hand with your hand. You wash your hand.

Yeah, and you feel it like, oh, it's sandy today or all these seeds are in there or it's this weird color. And today it's like light brown. Yesterday it was dark brown. So you're monitoring your health and it's, there's absolutely no reason. I mean, yeah, you don't want to eat shit necessarily, but a little is a good thing.

It doesn't, like I would imagine in my, so like, we're both doctors. Right, we're both PhDs. Yeah, my understanding of it is that when you get shit on your hand, swarms of demons run up your arm and then into your mouth. Is that what you learned in medical school, Dr. Tressel? Yeah.

Yeah. Swarms, I hate when demons swarm, that's the worst. Yeah, but it feels like that's what, there is a sense of like, you know what it feels like, okay, the feeling of being clean versus the feeling of being unclean. So how much of that is just a placebo or like an illusion? Well, I think, you know, at least as far,

there's oil in your hair and stuff like that, that there is a real feeling of the oil. But the problem is you're never clean, you're never sterile. What happens with these babies you referred to earlier, when a baby's born by C-section, the baby's intestinal system, the intestinal flora and fauna, is ready to receive colonies, right?

The skin is waiting, the eyes, we've got living stuff all over us inside us everywhere, right? And the problem is you are going to be colonized, but if you're born vaginally, you're colonized by your mother's bacterial population, which is good for you because you're gonna be drinking her milk, and by the way, cholesterol, which is the first milk

that comes from a mother's breast, contains tons of immunological starter colonies, essentially, for the baby. So you get this baby set up with all the right friendly bacteria that are good at digesting the right kinds of food that are gonna protect your skin against the kinds of shit that wants to get in there and cause all sorts of problems.

But when you're not colonized by your mother's pop starter populations, what happens is you pick up, these babies pick up bacteria from the room, they pick it up from the nurse, from the doctor, from the curtains, from the patient who was in there before, from the sheets that aren't totally clean. So you're still getting colonized,

but it's this random, you're vulnerable to stuff coming in that's not good for you, that's not appropriate for your species or your age or whatever. So you're never clean, there is no sterility, all living things are thriving and swarming with microbes. That's the way life is, that's the way it works. And so this idea that we can somehow separate ourselves

from death, right? I mean, industrial farming is a big issue there, and we send all our dying people off to get out of the way somewhere. Our entire civilization is this huge distraction from the reality of death. And sterility is just another denial of death. It's an attempt to evade death by being clean.

Right, but what is sterile? Sterile is a vacuum, sterile is a place in which there's no life. So if you wanna be totally sterile, you gotta disappear. But what about, okay, so the mother's vaginal secretions give you good bacteria, what about like your girlfriend or what about, so you're getting, when you have sex with someone,

you're getting new colonies of bacteria on you? Yeah, and in you. And they're, so sex is probiotic, man. It is, but isn't that, that could be bad though. What if the person has like, like obviously STDs or like you don't want that, but so theoretically you could have sex with a person whose ecosystem is somehow counter to what you need.

And then get new colonies that are bad for you. Well, only if your colonies are depleted by, for example, having taken antibiotics. That's why antibiotics are really dangerous because they wipe out, not only, you know, you take them to kill the bad stuff, but they kill the good stuff too in your gut. So then your gut becomes very vulnerable

to whatever comes its way. So that's where you have to be really careful. So if you're taking antibiotics, you need to be really careful about replenishing your intestinal ecosystem with the right stuff because you're very open to the bad stuff getting in there. How much of what they say about the emotional impact of your bacterial colonies or even like,

how much of your behavior is affected by these things living inside of you? Well, there's, by the way, I had no idea you were gonna talk about this. This is why I love about you. Turn on the microphone and who knows? Spin the wheel. You know, I'll tell you one thing that's really interesting

is Talk So Plasmosis, you know about that? So in this book I just finished, by the way, the book I've been working on for years now, I sent it to the publisher and there's a section in there where I talk about this concept that we are living communities, right? And there is no real individual in any sense. Everything's dimensional, you know?

But anyway, Talk So Plasmosis is fascinating. So what we know about the way it affects rodents is that it's a parasite that can only reproduce in the digestive system of cats. So your cat shits it out, it's got these spores or eggs, larvae, whatever, in the cat shit. And it gets into the grass and then rats and mice eat it.

So as soon as it gets into the rodent, it migrates to the rodent's brain and it affects the brain of the rodent in a way that makes the rodent get sexually excited by the smell of cat piss. Wow. So the rodent, which is normally terrified of cats, is suddenly like, ooh, I gotta go rub my face

in some cat piss. And it also makes it sluggish, like move slowly and sort of jerk around to attract attention. So it completely takes over the rodent's behavior for its benefit, which is obviously to the demise of the cat, right? I mean, to the rodent. So then the cat eats it,

the things where it needs to be to reproduce, which is in the cat's digestive system, and so it goes. There are many examples of this in nature. So some of this stuff that gets into us, it benefits us, but some of it can be very detrimental. There's another one that gets into the brains of, I think it's like beetles or, no, it's bees. It's bumblebees.

And yeah, it's a larva of a wasp. And the wasp can actually inject these larvae into the bee in flight. It's like a mid-flight refueling kind of thing. And so it injects it into the back of the bee. And these larvae develop in the bee. They go to the bee's brain and they have the bee, not only like kamikaze into the dirt,

but it'll like fly down, boom, hit the dirt, and then dig into the dirt and then die an inch or so under the ground. And then it passes the winter in there, the hatch, they eat the bee's body from the outside and then they come up through it. I mean, but- It's a horror story.

Okay, but here's what's interesting to me about that. How the hell did that evolve? Yeah. I'd see no way Darwinian theory can explain how that sort of thing could evolve. How can there even be a gene that could encode that kind of behavior? It's inconceivable.

I mean, this is, I know, this is one of the great mysteries. And if it did evolve, when did it happen? And then, God, it seems like this is, you know, Crick wrote an essay on what's called, damn it, now the name isn't coming to my mind. It's really cool that it's the idea that the planet was seeded intentionally with DNA.

Oh, panspermia? Yeah, directed panspermia. So it's a way of like not being theistic, but being theistic because when he looked at DNA, it seemed that the age of the earth and the amount of time it would take for that series of evolutions to happen to create DNA, it didn't coincide with the age of the earth.

It would have taken much, much, much, much longer. For that kind of selection to happen, for any of it to form. So it was a mystery to him. So you could look up the essay, but to me what's really interesting is the parallels between this and concepts of demonic possession. It's like this biological form

of being possessed by something. When you think of your behavior patterns, how much of what you do is driven by cravings for food, if you crave food, it's gonna make you move in the direction of wherever the sugar is or the booze is or whatever the thing is, you're craving and especially with sugar, they're saying these are gut bacteria

or colonies in your gut that are somehow sending out biochemical signals that are somehow emerging into your consciousness as the idea of like, fuck man, I want an ice cream right now. Well, you know, there are as many neurotransmitters in your gut as there are in your brain. So the idea that like follow your gut,

like that there's your heart, your gut and your brain are the main centers for neurotransmitters. To get back to neurotoxoplasmosis, it affects people's behavior as well. There's a Czech scientist who's really into this and he's demonstrated that people who are, I think it's like 40% of the population is infected with toxoplasmosis.

So if you've had cats like I have, I mean, I'd definitely have it. You have a much higher elevated chance of having schizophrenia, higher chance of suicide, aggressive like murdering someone, traffic accidents, also like women are more likely to have unprotected sex if they're infected with toxoplasmosis. All this kind of higher risk behavior.

Well, this is, so there's this beautiful occult principle which is as above, so below. So it's a really curious thing, which is that the human organism gets infested with these colonies that destroy it, that can destroy you through your own behavior. That's what's wild about it. If you're addicted to sugar

because your colonies have gut bacteria, somehow are craving glucose or whatever, that'll kill you, it'll give you diabetes, and that'll change your behavior. Just eating sugar is gonna make you act differently a little bit. So it's a really fascinating idea that the environmental destruction of this planet,

if our behavior is in some way being shifted by the microorganisms living inside of us, then you could say we've been as a species possessed by some kind of like alien intelligence that is, yes. Now you're provoking me, because this is my next book. What's the next book? It's called The Working Titles of the Human Swarm,

and it's about how we are in fact controlled and possessed by an alien intelligence. What's the alien intelligence? Well, like I was talking about dimensions, right? How everything is dimensional. Like you think of yourself as Duncan, I think of myself as Dr. Ryan, Dr. Trussell, Dr. Ryan. But in fact, as I said, you are in fact

a community of organisms, most of which don't have your DNA in terms of body weight. If you remove all the water and just look at the mass, you have more organisms in you with non-Duncan DNA than you have cells with Duncan DNA. I mean, that's crazy. So you're actually a minority in your own body. It's just insane.

It's insane. So anyway, so I was sort of looking at, like when I was writing this book, Civilized to Death, I got to a point where it's like, okay, wait a minute. If civilization, you know, I'm arguing civilization's not all it's sold as, and prehistory was much better than we're told, and there's this political agenda

to make us think that this is so great, you know? And so I'm developing that argument. And then I got to the point where it's like, well, I have to respond to, you know, the main question people are gonna have is like, okay, if civilization's as bad as you say, then why is it so powerful? What is it?

Why does everyone want it? Why is it working? And so I started looking into that, and I got to this concept of emergent properties, emergent intelligence, emergent systems and all that, right? And so I was looking at, you know, I don't know if you and I have spoken about this, the locust and grasshopper thing.

So there's a species of grasshopper in Northern Africa in the Sahara region. And like, so the grasshoppers are cool. Oh yes, we have spoken about it, but please, refresh. Well, there's a great, there's an essay on aeon.com, a-e-o-n.com, and it's called Selfish Meme No More or something like that. I encourage people to look it up.

The author's name is Dobbs, and they've got pictures of the grasshopper and the locust and all that on the essay. And so what happens is this grasshopper is chill, it's dispersed, you know, just everybody, you know, chewing the grass and doing what they do and everybody's fine, and then it starts raining and the green areas grow quickly

and the population of the grasshoppers increases very quickly. So now you've got a lot of grasshoppers, the rains stop and the green areas start to shrink, right? And so the population of grasshoppers gets more and more densely packed together. And it reaches a point where there are epigenetic changes triggered, so it's DNA that's within them, but it just normally doesn't function

except for in certain situations, which happens with us and all organisms. And so this epigenetic DNA kicks in and the individuals, I'm not talking over generations, the individuals, it's like a Mr. Jekyll, Dr. Hyde or Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde? Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde. They transform their coloring changes,

the shape of their head changes, their front legs get shorter, their back legs get longer, it's like the hulk or whatever, and they get really aggressive and cannibalistic when they start attacking each other. And then like, oh, fuck this guy's trying to bite my ass. Oh, fuck you, I'm gonna bite your ass.

And then they all get into this like crazy, aggressive behavior and that becomes a swarm. And then they swarm, the biblical swarm, the plague of locusts, they swarm all over and eat everything and destroy everything. And they're just unstoppable until they eat and everything in sight and then 99% of them die and then 1% that's left go back to being grasshoppers.

Wow, what a weird day that is when you go back to being a grasshopper. Let's not talk about what just happened, it was so weird. It's like Nazis in, you know, 47, like, oh, we're just, whoops, we didn't know what was happening. So I know where you're going with this, of course, like human beings, you can compress together, are we transforming into some kind of like,

We are, not transforming, we are, right now, we are locusts. We are destroying the planet, we're swarming. So my question is this, what about the reverse of that? Is it possible that there could be a love swarm, that there could be instead of the mutation in the direction of aggression, there could be another mutation, an epigenetic hidden thing inside of us

that instead of making us kill each other and blow each other up, shifts us in the direction of harmony instead of destruction? Possibly, I certainly hope so, but I think that, you know, I think it's one of those things that, you know, I've said this before in your show, I'm sure that people always ask me, like, you know, what's human nature?

Are we naturally violent or peaceful or this or that, right? And my answer is always, well, that's like asking, what's the natural state of H2O? It's totally dependent on conditions. So I think that, you know, my one hope is that maybe through the kind of, you know, free and quick exchange of information, like what we're engaged in right now, that we've reached a point where there's this global brain

where an idea is able to take over really quickly. And so that's a very important functional element in all this, but I think that what we need to do is dramatically reduce global population. I think the people need to say, you know what, I'm not gonna worry about being a vegetarian, I'm not gonna worry about, you know, recycling my fucking plastic bags.

What I'm gonna do is not have kids. That's my contribution. And we need to, you know, educate women and make sure people have minimal basic income, which I think is a very interesting idea that's starting to gain popularity. Because once people know, like, especially people in the so-called third world,

if they know, like, I don't need to have nine kids to survive in, you know, an old age. Like I'll have economic security just cause I'm alive. Once that is built in, I think then people stop having so many kids. And then if we get population down to 50 million or fewer, like we'll have a fucking wonderful place here. I am, one thing that I'm surprised when we chatted,

I was surprised you'd never been to Burning Man before. Oh, yeah, that's where you can have a love swarm. People talk about you a lot there, man. You've had a big influence on some of the culture there. And it's interesting to hear people quoting you, or someone will just be talking about polyamory and I'll listen to them like, oh, sex is done. You're quoting Dr. Ryan.

But I was, I'm- Was this your first year? First year. And yeah, I think what you're saying is logical, but I don't think it's pragmatic. I just don't see how you're ever gonna get human beings to stop popping out little versions of themselves. Though I do, it is clearly, that is,

it's like we can't keep making more of us. Well, there's too many of us. Yeah, that's for everybody else. Everyone else should stop making more of them. But most people, when they think about that, they're like, yeah, you're right. Those other people should stop. But not my little messiah.

Do you have kids? Not yet, but I'm gonna make a little messiah. Chrissy's gonna be the best little boy or girl. She's gonna save the world. Yeah, but that is talk about the sort of epigenetic momentum or inside every person is that weird desire. But man, I'll tell you, one thing that happens

at a place like Burning Man, and I don't know of any other place like that, I'm sure they exist, is you get put into a situation where there really isn't even an income. There's not a basic income. There's just a concept of I'm gonna give what I've got, not everything, but in a smart way. I'm gonna give stuff that I brought here to other people.

And not everyone's doing that. Of course, there's pricks anywhere. But most people are doing that. So what ends up happening is you just get this sort of never-ending influx of gifts from people. And you're giving that out, and you're getting these dopamine or serotonin, or getting these wonderful hits of euphoria,

just walking around with like, fuck, make some guacamole at Burning Man, make a bowl of guacamole out in the desert and carry that around with chips to give to people. Everyone gets so happy. Something as simple as that. So this creates relief from the thing that your book that Civilized to Death

is talking about, this isn't great. It creates a relief from capitalism and not a forced relief. It lets you see like, hey, check this out. It's like a renaissance fare for some kind of, I don't wanna call it communism because the term's so weighted, but communism in the sense of let's live together

as a community, it's like suddenly you realize, Jesus Christ, this is way, way better than anything I've ever experienced. There's a reason that feels so good, which is that that kind of sharing and egalitarianism was the essential element in our species surviving for hundreds of thousands of years. So the big secret is that we are by nature communists.

We are by nature socialists. The problem with communism and socialism and all that is that they try to operate it on a scale in which other human beings were abstractions and you can't do it that way. It only works when you're looking in the eyes of the person. You're not gonna rip someone off

when you're looking in their eyes, when you know them, when they take care of your kid, when they shared their dinner with you last night, when their partner and you had sex a couple of weeks ago and they know and you know and everyone loves each other and it's cool. You're not gonna fuck someone like that over and if you do, you're gonna get kicked out of the group

which is gonna be really bad for you. So everyone has an interest in being cool in that kind of environment. Plus, you're talking about Burning Man which takes place in the desert, right? Imagine that same kind of energy taking place in a forest or a jungle that's full of food, that's full of fish in the river,

they're fruit, tang and from the trees. Imagine that that sort of culture of abundance is happening in an environment of abundance where people look at the gods not as we've been taught to do as jealous and capricious and they'll fuck you over and they're looking over your shoulder and if you touch your balls, they're gonna send you to hell forever.

No, the gods are like taking care of you and providing you with everything and the feeling toward the gods among hunter-gatherers is one of gratitude. The feeling toward life in general is one of gratitude. Not struggle for survival. But like, holy fuck, what did I do to get all this? Thank you.

And surrender too, right? There's, you gotta let go into the world and then it takes care of you and anything you try to hold onto, the world like punishes you or just as you end up expending more energy than you need to, which if there ever was a sin in animal life, it's like burning calories

that don't need to get burnt when you're in a survival situation. Well, no, but see, that's the thing. The premise that nature is a survival situation I think is a flawed premise. Rogan's always, you know, every time I see one of Joe's like photos on Instagram, it's like, look at this badass crocodile.

Nature's a motherfucker, man. Nature don't fuck around. It's like a baboon. It's like a baboon trying to climb out of an Anaconda's mouth. Chewing his way out of a gator's belly. Like a hyena just like sitting inside a disemboweled thing. But that does happen. Of course it happens.

Auto accidents happen too, but you don't say, LA is the place where everyone is roadkill. It's like, come on. I was watching this BBC, like one of those nature documentaries with Sir David Attenborough and Richard or whatever his name was. And it was at the beginning of it, it was like all these seals playing.

I think it was in South Africa, so they were playing on the waves. And like, oh, the seals, the lovely, lovely seals. And then you hear, do, do, do, do, do, do. And you see this big shadow. And of course, you know, it's a great way. And it comes up and it hits the seal and boom, the seals up in the air.

You see the shark come out and the narrator says, like, we slowed this down to one 40th of normal speed. So you can see, and you see like the sharks, the lips come back and the gums and the teeth waiting. And the seal's like, oh, fuck. And the seal comes down and then it's like, from the blood running down. And it's just this like really horrific thing, right?

And then he's intoning like nature, the constant struggle for survival. And I mean, okay. And I'm like, Jesus, that sucks. But then I thought like, I don't know. I've seen, like in Alaska, there were seals all over the place. I've spent some time with seals, you know?

And they seem pretty chill. Like, so I looked up harbor seals. Like how long does a harbor seal live? Like 25 to 35 years, I think. Like 35 is the average age of death. So let's say that harbor seal's 25. 25 years, that seal's been playing in the waves, eating sushi, hanging with his friends,

sleeping on a warm rock, having a pretty chill time, right? Fuckin', I guess seals, fuck. I don't know how they reproduce. Having fun. Then one day he's playing with his friends in the fucking wave and in a second, he's dead. Probably doesn't even feel pain

because of all the endorphins that get released when something like that happens. So, but then we look at that. We're like, oh, nature is always a struggle for survival. What about all the time lying on the rocks, chillin' out that seals do? I don't see them struggling for survival there. You know, you were saying, well, oh, wasting calories.

Are you kidding? You ever seen like foxes play, bear clubs play, wolves play? Everybody's playing it all the time? Yeah, I think you're right, man. That's a great correction. I know what you mean. We do get conditioned to imagine the world as this dire maelstrom of suffering.

Just like they told the slaves in the South, like, oh, you had it really bad in Africa. You're much better off over here. Because if you think that, then you can be really harder on the planet too. If you think that the game is this Machiavellian, you know, survive or get eaten by something, then you can start acting like that.

You would begin to embody that version of the universe. You do what you need to do to stay inside the cage. You know, you got to keep the lights on in the zoo because, oh my God, if we ever got out of here, if they ever kick us out of these cages, we'd be in big trouble out there in the world. You know, it's like, come on. Yeah, things die.

And that gets back to what I was saying before about how civilization is this giant distraction from death. Because you made the point in the hunter-gatherer thing in the world of gratitude and acceptance and all that. One of the things you accept is death. And one of the things that die is kids. That's the big price of the hunter-gatherer life, is that the mortality rate for young kids is quite high.

So yeah, there's death. And I was reading about these hunter-gatherers in the Amazon. And when one of the people gets old too old and they can't keep up with the group anymore or they're getting dementia or whatever, what'll happen is that somebody will be chosen from the group, usually a man,

to come up behind the old person and hit him in the back of the head with a hatchet. Jesus. Right, horrible, right? But is it as horrible as what we do to old people? How it takes them so long to die, so much suffering. Intubating them, putting a nice tube down their throat and letting them-

And up their ass. And someone has to wipe their ass and the humiliation and the pain and the chemo. I guess it's consent here. I think this is an issue of consent, which is theoretically that old person is somehow made the decision to try to extend his life or her life for as long as they can.

Whereas in this situation, they probably weren't like, all right, man, sign me up for the ax job this month. Well, okay, but I mean, getting into consent, people can't choose to die in our culture. Like in California and Oregon, they're I think the only two states that have even provisional euthanasia.

They can't hire a doctor to kill them. By the way, I passed a guy in the process of maybe killing himself. I'm on my way to your house today. Really? Yeah. Yeah, I came down, I was coming into, got off the highway and you know,

there's that like old art deco bridge over into Pasadena. So there's a cop car and tape cross, you know, so I couldn't go on it. So I came down below and I looked up on the bridge to see what was going if there was an accident on the bridge or something. There's a guy standing there, like, you know, ready to jump.

Ready to go into the void. You know, it's the, I hear what you're saying. I look, you know, I think that it is possible that we're, we could pick and choose the good stuff. Oh yeah. You know, and, you know, there's so much that you can learn from what people act like communally and then blend that in into something.

You know, this, to get back to your alien idea, which I think is really cool, man. The idea. Oh, we never finished that. No, we never finished that. But the idea that like the winds of our species or societies or what's blowing them or what's moved the movement of our,

what we call evolution or technological advancement is maybe not so much coming from our own cognition, but from something deeper than that, some deeper thing that maybe we aren't quite sure what it is. I think that that thing wants in the same way that your body wants to heal. I think that thing wants to heal.

And you, we've talked about this on Joe's with the shrimp parade. You and I talked about this with Joe, I remember a few times. Well, the idea that our current state is like a larval state in the life form of what we are. I would not say larval. I think I would say an infection.

Right. And that there is an impulse for, what's it called? It's a great word for cell death. What's that called? Oh, apoptosis. Yes, so there's, that is a potential impulse. It's just like Freud, the life and death instinct. Thanatos and, was it Eros and Thanatos?

Eros probably, but so, and we can feel that. You can feel that in the movies that we like to watch. And like, but I think there is an equal, maybe more subtle call towards a kind of, I don't know, it's probably a cheesy word, but neoprimitivism, a kind of acknowledging the, the prosperity and abundance that comes from inclusivity, yeah, rather than exclusivity.

I think you're right, man. And I think it's manifesting in lots of different ways right now, but I think historically, we're definitely at an inflection point where people around the world are seeing that the path we've been on for the last couple of centuries has led to a point of diminishing returns. So it's been like getting better and better,

richer and richer, you know, we're going to the moon and then like, oh, well, we're not really going anywhere anymore. And we had the supersonic airplane crossing the Atlantic. And then no, that took that down. And now we're just back to the slow ones. And you know, like there was this point where it started the wave, like started coming back down.

And you know, American kids now don't expect to live as long as their parents. They can't, you know, medically, they're not going to. They can't expect to be as wealthy as their parents. You know, they come out of college in debt. We look at institutions are corrupted, the church, the medical community, the Wall Street, the political community, everything's just, you know,

hollowed out and empty and in a state of collapse. And I think, you know, in the Middle East, ISIS, and you know, like all these groups there, Boko Haram, all this kind of stuff, those are responses to the same thing that like, hey, what you guys have been selling us, it's bullshit. So we're going back to the Koran or we're going back to, you know,

whatever our little thing is. So the people are, at this point, I think the dominant social, economic, civilizational paradigm has been exposed as corrupted and empty and so everyone's looking for other answers, which is exciting because for the first time, you know, I think that happened with Sex at Dawn. Like if that book had been published 10 years earlier,

I don't think it would have been as successful because I think people would have been just like, yeah, come on, marriage is fine, everybody's happy. You know, they're still pretending it worked. But when it came out, people were kind of ready to say, you know what, actually, it's true, this isn't really working. So they're open to looking at another analysis.

Well, we get, one thing that we get to do as a species and one thing that we have done for better or for worse is we form religions. That's something that definitely happens. Undeniably, now the formation of the religion is usually mythological because it's happened so long ago before there was any technology to record whatever the particular prophet was

that expounded their religion. So, you know, who knows what really started them, but one thing that we do or maybe like in the same way that the grasshoppers turn into the locust, maybe there is some grasshopper messiah who's like, wait, I've got an idea. Here's how we should really behave. And then that creates the swarm.

So in that same way, we do this as a species in the form of some being that emerges with some new path, right? So we do do that, which means that if it has happened, the precedent has been set that it will happen again. A global religion that is as of yet is non-existent or is in a kind of formative fetal period will grow into a full-on world religion.

Not a cult, not a cult, but an actual, there is a way that we can organize some new way to harmonize with each other. And I think it's happening. I think it is. I think it, at least we're making little attempts at it. You know, in festivals like Burning Man or like people like you writing books about all other ways to live

that are based on ways that worked or people like Wim Hof, I think there are, there is the potential. And so what I love about this election right now, when I, so marijuana, the legalization of marijuana was on the bill, was on the ballot, I can't remember when, the last presidential, I think it was the last one, it was on the ballot.

And I remember like, I can't remember when it was, it was in LA, but I remember like going to vote and I woke up like right away. So I get to the polls right away to vote for the legalization of marijuana, something I feel very strongly about and it didn't happen. And I got in an email conversation with somebody from, I don't remember, some marijuana advocacy group.

And they're like, no, you just getting it on the ballot is a victory. Just getting it in front of enough people is a victory. Don't worry, it's gonna get legal, it's just gonna take time. So in the same way, this presidential election is so glorious. Everyone's so appalled and horrified and terrified, but it's like, no, this is so great

because the gig is up. We see now that the machinations of politics or what the drooling conspiracy theorists that have always said, it's fixed, man. It's fixed both ways. It's dirty, they lie, they're Machiavellian, they potentially, I don't know for sure as we have no proof of it, but maybe they kill.

And we see that now. Of course we have proof of it. The entire US foreign policy is about killing. Oh yeah, we know that. But as far as the individual cobbles that call themselves political parties, assassinations and stuff, there's a lot of people who say that Hillary Clinton,

there's a lot of people floating around the Clintons that have died. Like they know a lot of dead people. Yeah, but dude, there are a lot of people floating around me that have died in the last year. Over a hundred? Well, not over a hundred, but I don't know that. I don't know a hundred people.

But more people have died in my life in the last year than the rest of my life combined. I'm sorry to hear that, man. Including one today. Oh, no. Yeah, my guy who's on my podcast, he didn't die today, but it was sort of announced that he's probably dead. He disappeared in the Himalayas.

He's the guy who's on my podcast a few times, Justin Alexander. Oh, man. Really cool guy, traveler. Spent a month with him in Thailand this winter, and he went off to India and met some Baba who invited him to come live in a cave with him in the Himalayas, and he went up and didn't come back.

And apparently the Baba had something to do with it. Oh, they think the Baba killed him? Yeah, the Baba and another guy are in custody. Ooh. Yeah. Yikes. Watch your Baba. Be careful with Babas.

Yeah. You gotta be careful. I'm sorry, man, that sucks. No, it does suck. It's really. But anyway, I mean, I don't believe that Hillary Clinton killed anybody or said, you know, take him out, you know? Well, no, we know that she did do that with, like, Gaddafi.

Oh, sure. So we do know that being Hillary Clinton doesn't have a problem killing certain people. Like, she certainly, and she seems to be amused by it to some degree. So we do know that. Like, that is a conspiracy theorist stuff. And so you think, well, I guess if a person

would be willing to, like, or at least would be kind of jubilant over the death of Gaddafi, the fucking, you know, got a knife shoved into his asshole and then was shot. If somebody like that can, like, kind of, who was semi-responsible or was part of the group of people that helped make that happen, we came. We saw he died, that famous YouTube clip.

Then if someone could be like that, then, you know, I don't think it's insane to speculate that other people who got in that person's way, if they had to, let's just say all options might be on the table. Yeah, the thing is, you know, I think I look at these things from a more of a structural perspective. You know, like, I agree with you

that there are these movements arising and bubbling up and, you know, the alternative views and alternative ways of organizing, you know, social interactions and sexuality and, you know, legalizing drugs and ayahuasca, spreading through the world is having an interesting effect. So those are all really hopeful things. For me, though, I kind of feel like those things,

when they reach a certain level, they become corrupted. They either get squelched or they become corrupted in order to continue to exist within the power dynamic that exists. So same with politicians, you know, Bernie Sanders, I think he's a cool guy. I think Obama's a cool guy. I think if Obama were sitting at the table here,

we'd have a good time with him. Sure, I'm sure. But Obama pushes those fucking buttons and blows people up, including innocent people that he knows are just at the wedding and had nothing to do with anything. Well, he's charismatic. He's charismatic, but I think he's also a decent guy.

But the problem is that they become part of the system, which gets back to the earlier point we were talking about, like we are enslaved because we are, it doesn't matter who the person is. It's like, you know, we're on this bus that's careening out of control and we're all fighting over who gets to sit in the driver's seat.

But the big secret is the driver's not driving the bus. The bus is driving itself. And the only thing we can do is get off the fucking bus before it crashes. And that's really hard to do. Because what do you do? How do you get out? How do you get off?

It's like you can go to Burning Man for a week, but then you have to come back to reality. You got the... But I mean, then you, when you come back to reality, your perspective's been shifted a little bit. But you're still on the bus that's careening out of control. You're still part of, you're still flying on airplanes. But maybe you're gathering together now

with some people that you met there and having conversations. And maybe a lot of those people at Burning Man are like... Oh, God, Duncan. Well, it's not just Burning Man. It's... So sad. Why?

I always feel so sad. When I talk to you, I always feel like, you know, I always feel like your older brother saying, I'm sorry, Duncan. Santa Claus just doesn't exist. Ah, well, I mean, this is our disagreement. But I... And I can understand looking at humans

as a kind of mutated swarm of planetary destruction. I agree with you that we have both capacity. Both capacities. For most of our existence as a species, we were cool. We were grasshoppers. And we have that potential, no doubt. And I think that to think that this... To use your bus analogy,

to think that there's people just sitting on the bus kind of randomly hammering at the doors. How the fuck do we get off this fucking bus, fighting each other to get off? I think that is underestimating what maybe is actually happening. For example, look at like Julian Assange. I just read this, Julian Assange's strategy, right?

And many years ago, he wrote this editorial piece on how the way to handle corruption in the system, what you're talking about, is to do everything you can to expose the secrets of the system. And the more people see the secrets, the more the people are not, or either there's going to be,

he's got a great name for it, the cost of keeping secrets increases, more and more and more. So it becomes easier to just not keep secrets than it does to keep secrets. Because it becomes now, you know, people in the politics are having to use like burner phones and like they can't send emails,

the whole fucking thing's gotten jammed up because they can't do their like devious, whispering weird shit because a lot of it, you don't know if it's getting picked up or not, or if it will get picked up. They're living in a state of constant fear and paranoia. They don't know what's going to get released next. They know they sent some fucked up emails.

They just don't know which ones are in the hands of who. And that also creates this like energetic drag on the system. So his plan is really smart, which is let's shine the light on the secrets of the political class. And from doing that, they won't be able to keep secrets as easily. And that might cause a shift in the way that they do business.

And that shift would be in the direction, hopefully of what it was meant to be all along, which is that they embody the will of the people. And theoretically the will of the people is not to destroy the ecosystem, is not to go to war. So I think that the reason I'm hopeful, and you know, let's say it is a belief in Santa Claus, right?

I would prefer to think of it more as like the last stand of like during the French Revolution when people were just getting shot mowed down. I want to be the person getting mowed down. I would want to be that person getting torn up by my possibly naive idea that human beings are beautiful, amazing creatures that wanna love, that want the world to be healthy,

the impulse is there, and that we're doing it. And we're doing it in a, some of us are doing it in a really smart way. Cause this fucking exposure of the Clinton emails, all of it is related to technology. All of it is related to people who are smart enough to have hacked into that system and to have populated the internet with that information.

So somebody out there knows what they're doing and they're doing a great job at it. The problem is that the political system is already weakened. And so it's easier to take down the political system than the real players who are the Koch brothers, the Adelson's of the world, the, you know, General Motors, Exxon, those people.

And I don't see a lot of their emails getting hacked. I don't see them going to jail yet. I hope it moves on to that, but that's where the power is. Politics, as Frank Zappa said, is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex. So it's easy to attack the entertainment division, but you gotta attack the people who are really running this.

And what I'm arguing is that people aren't running it. That gets to the we're enslaved by a higher intelligence point because, you know, the metaphor I often use is like, okay, let's say the head of, you know, BP goes to Brazil with his kid and takes ayahuasca and has some incredible experience and then comes back to work and says, listen, we can't do this deep water drilling anymore.

We can't guarantee that's not going to happen again. Well, this is crazy. We're destroying our own planet. We have to stop this. We have to like retrench and invest everything into renewable resources. What's going to happen to that guy? He's going to be out before lunch.

He's gone. And if the board of directors happens to back him, they'll be replaced by the next quarterly meeting. In other words, you know, people often say, well, you know, you're talking all this shit about companies, but they're good people who work at Exxon. Yeah, I'm sure there are. But if those good people try to bring their good values

to what Exxon does, they'll be fired because it doesn't, they don't run Exxon. Exxon runs them. Just like, you know, the boss drives us. No, sure, yeah. So we're embedded in a system just like this shit's in our stomach that's, you know, part of our, you know, we think,

like the guts, the stuff in our guts aren't saying like, hey, let's go have a pizza today. You know, I mean, at most they're sort of sending out these vague signals that then we interpret. And I think that we're embedded in institutions that are life forms. So religions, governments, companies, and then they are all embedded

in what we call civilization, which is another life form. And it's got its own agenda, its own motivations and its own decision-making processes that we're only vaguely aware of. But we don't need to worry about that. Like the, so yeah, sure, the Exxon example or whoever it is comes back to work and he gets canned or she gets canned

and goes out in the world and has a beautiful fucking life, becomes a farmer or something, you know, or whatever becomes something else that isn't quite so destructive. I think it's the important pixel to focus on or the important cell to focus on is the self to look at what you're doing. And then, because if I get too caught up in the,

oh shit, man, this whole fucking, we're trapped in a bus heading off a cliff into the mouth of a fucking shark that just ate a seal. If I get too caught up in all that, then what ends up happening is that my hopefulness or what might drive me, like what you were saying, these seals, they're playing on the fucking beach. They're 28 years, 30 years old, hopefully.

They get chomped by a shark, but goddamn, they had a great life. That's a good deal. They knew how to play. You look at the ratio of pleasure to pain in that life, it's a pretty fucking good deal. It's a better deal than most of us get. But then you extrapolate from that.

Right. The cognitive weightiness of contemplating the emulation of society and that we're trapped in a burning building. Then that's gonna reduce that ability to play. But see, you're making an argument from its effects back toward whether or not it's true. And I think that doesn't work, right?

It's like saying, look, believing in God makes me feel better, therefore I believe in God. Okay, fine, but that has nothing to do with whether or not God exists. But this isn't believing in God. No, it's believing in what you're choosing to believe in because it's more pleasurable than believing in something else. Not because it's more pleasurable, it's pragmatic.

If I'm gonna, it's like, the idea is if I believe that the human community that not the United States, not Russia, the global community has the potential to use technology to transfer information in a way that's gonna create a higher probability of giving to someone else, of sharing outside of trying to make money, then that's going to, that belief is going to compel me

to continue to do experiments and giving shit away, which I like to do now. Thanks to Burning Man, but also, but just that little bit, that's the movement. If we're talking about- I hear you, dude, I think we agree. It feels like we disagree, but I think we absolutely agree that,

I mean, these are things I believe that, when I look at history and I look at the history of every civilization that's ever existed, I see collapse, collapse is coming, it's coming soon, it's happening now, but that's not bad news. I think it's good news. In fact, there's a beautiful book that I quote extensively

in Civilized to Death called Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. In that book, she looks at disaster sociology, people who study human behavior in disasters, right? And according to the neo-Hobbesian vision of human nature, which is that it's a dog eat dog world, and we're all survival mechanisms and we'll drown our brother if that'll keep us alive

for another five minutes. That vision of human nature is completely betrayed by how people really behave in disasters. When civilization falls away and it's like, ah, now all hell's gonna break loose and the wolf man is a wolf to man. No, that's when people help each other, help strangers. And when they look back at that time in their lives,

invariably, they say that was the best time of their lives. That's right, man, that's right. The most meaningful, that's when they had community. We do agree then, because I just think that what's happened is we've been convinced that we need this cobble of people to run the show. That's it. And we've been disempowered as the potential

of the human community is so incredible. And these bastards have got us tricked into thinking that we need them. And part of it is, that's why I disagreed with you earlier with the whole nature is all about survival. Because part of it is, they're telling us, nature is ruthless and you won't survive a second out there so you need our protection.

And you, inside you, is a monster waiting to get out. So you need our sort of spiritual guidance or you'll destroy people and do things you'll regret. And in fact, both of those things are false. Right, that's where we agree. Fuck, did we just agree? I think we did, yeah, on a very profound level. Yeah, and that to me is so exciting.

And that message, what you just said, that inspires hope in people. And the more that gets, and also, it's not enough to like logically contemplate the possibility that it could be those two things or lies, you have to, you're, the imperative is to do the experiment. Well, that's what civilized to death is. Civilized to death, coming soon to a bookstore near you,

is, I'm disputing that predominant worldview. That civilization is necessary because otherwise we're uncivilized. We're brutes, we're animals, we're, you know, we're... It's like the concept, I guess... Pagan. That's not civilization. Maybe the thing is like, it's not civilization.

That's what you mean, right? The thing that we think is civilization. Is a fucking disease, it's destructive, it's a death cult, it's horrible. But like every system, it wants to survive. So it convinces us that it's doing us a big favor, that things are so much better than they used to be, than they ever were, that we're moving forward,

that things are getting better, we're gonna have jet packs soon, we're going to Mars, people, we're gonna live twice as long, we're gonna, everything's gonna be so great, just keep running on that fucking wheel. But then you look back and you're like, wait a minute, I mean, I'm 54 years old, my life is not, I don't have like tons of leisure time

because of my cell phone. All I've got is that they know where I am at all times and can listen to anything I say, you know? And I can be contacted by anyone, like it hasn't been a step forward, fuck that. Well, I mean, it can, but it's like, all these technology can be, it can be great. Jet packs could be amazing in a world

where there wasn't any money. But not if they destroy the ozone layer. Yeah, well, and by bad news, by the way, man, they've got jet packs now. Have you seen the videos of the jet packs? Oh, I've seen the water ones. No, some, well, no, they fly them over water because if it malfunctions,

you've seen the ones that shoot, no man, they got one now. They've got like a jet, jet pack. It shoots jet fuel, some weird guy floats around and it looks scary as fucking hell, man. But, well, I'm excited about your new book and I'm also excited to demo virtual reality for you. Yeah, that'll be fun. We're gonna do porn, are we?

Yeah, I'll show you the whole menu where I'm like single whale swim by to like getting jerked off by this, I guess like it's the, honestly, man, there is such a, just a great potential for any kind of people who make porn out there. I just don't know why you're not making it for virtual reality because right now

it seems like the VR porn, even though I'm sure people are doing it, you'll see it's just like, it really is like. Did you hear I won that porn award? Yeah, I can relax. That's what I was nominated for, yeah. Chris, you gotta like maybe start, make your own brand of virtual reality porn.

I've told a few other people too, like Connor or Bebe, like I don't know why people aren't doing this because it's so. Probably the budget. I mean, there's no budget for porn anymore because it's all just the homemade and amateur. But this, the VR porn, you can like, this is a weird way to end this podcast, by the way.

It's like how to make money off of virtual reality porn. We just went from talking about the potential of humanity to rise above the goddamn. What is Oscar Wilde said? We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. I guess, well, I guess, you know, maybe it like adds to the idea that technology

can be something that brings joy to people's lives instead of something that destroys the planet. Chris, thank you so much for coming on the show. How can people find you? On Twitter, I'm chrisryanphd. My website's chrisryanphd.com. What else? You know, I'm around.

Oh, my podcast is tangentially speaking. That's all on my website. It's on iTunes, whatever. I talked to Joe. I mean, he wants to do a shrimp parade soon. I think we're on time. I know, do you get like daily? Yes.

Once every couple of days. I get every, it's like, hey, what is, oh, you're in LA. Does that mean a shrimp parade's coming soon? One is coming for sure. All right, we're gonna do one. All right, the shrimp chow parade. Yes.

Thanks for listening, everybody. That was Chris Ryan. You can find everything you need to reach Dr. Ryan by going to the comments section of this podcast or just go to chrisryanphd.com. Much thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. Don't forget to go to squarespace.com. Use offer code Duncan.

You'll get 10% off a brand new website. If you like this website, do us a favor. Subscribe to us on iTunes. If you feel like buying adult diapers and HTC Vive or any of the other things that have been mentioned on this podcast, make sure you go through the Amazon link, which is in the lower left-hand corner of our website. And don't just subscribe to us on iTunes.

Subscribe to the idea that this world is a truly beautiful place that is in the process of healing and transforming into something so incredible that our little pea-brained human minds can't possibly comprehend it. And remember, you're sticky where you're stuck. So if your mind has become a fly trap, which is catching dark, terrifying thoughts,

then follow that fly trap into the wound and send some love vibes down there. And if you do that, then miracles can happen. That's what I read on a tombstone. I'll see you guys soon. We got some really great episodes coming up. I love you. Hare Krishna.

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